Google Thinks It Can Replace Passwords With Inaudible Sounds Only Your Phone Can Hear

February 25, 2014 Leave a comment

Google Thinks It Can Replace Passwords With Inaudible Sounds Only Your Phone Can Hear

JIM EDWARDS TECH  FEB. 17, 2014, 8:24 AM

Google has acquired SlickLogin, an Israeli startup that has developed an ingenious solution to the pain-in-the-butt that is “two-factor authentication” (when you have topunch in your password and a code from a text message

on your phone to access a web site or app).

The company lets your phone “listen” to a web site, and the confirmation of the unique inaudible sound confirms it’s you trying to get access, not a hacker in a remote location.

You’d never need a password again — just hold your phone near your computer.

Cult of Android explains it best:

Here’s how SlickLogin works. You visit a site that supports SlickLogin. Instead of entering a name or password, you simply hold your smartphone close to the laptop or computer you’re using, and entry is granted.

What’s really happening is that the web site is playing a sound, which is encrypted data encoded into ultra-sonic (higher than human hearing) sound. Your phone hears it, and sends the data back to the SlickLogin servers. That’s the authentication.

The sound code is different each time, so person requesting access has to be in the room every time — hackers can’t do that.

SlickLogin launched at Disrupt five months ago. Here’s a message from the founders:

We started SlickLogin because security measures had become overly complicated and annoying.

Our friends thought we were insane, but we knew we could do better. So we set out to improve security while still making it simple for people to log in.

Today we`re announcing that the SlickLogin team is joining Google, a company that shares our core beliefs that logging in should be easy instead of frustrating, and authentication should be effective without getting in the way. Google was the first company to offer 2-step verification to everyone, for free – and they’re working on some great ideas that will make the internet safer for everyone. We couldn`t be more excited to join their efforts.

– Or, Ori & Eran (The SlickLogin team)

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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